At-risk Democrats stress over Obama and immigration

The Senate’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbents, caught in the crosscurrents of immigration reform, are urging President Barack Obama to show restraint in using his executive powers to slow deportations.

Obama is locked between a progressive base demanding aggressive action and voters in conservative states that will decide the fate of the Senate and hold outsized importance in shaping the final two years of his presidency. The White House is weighing how far it can go, legally and politically, in delaying deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants.

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His decision will be announced just weeks before Election Day, and the timing is precarious for Democrats running in conservative states, where any reminder of their ties to the unpopular president is problematic — let alone for a decision as sweeping and controversial as what the White House is considering.

A White House official said the president didn’t choose the timeline. Senate Democratic leaders, facing pressure from immigrant rights groups, began insisting in February that Obama act on his own by the summer if overhaul legislation remained stalled in the House.

At-risk Senate incumbents will be consulted along with other congressional constituencies such as the Hispanic caucus and Democratic leaders, administration officials said. But Obama isn’t planning to moderate his approach based on what plays best in Anchorage or Little Rock because Republicans will attack any executive action, ambitious or restrained, as an abuse of presidential power, the officials said.

Two of the top Republican targets, Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, have gone further than any of their Democratic colleagues in warning that Obama shouldn’t take any steps without the approval of Congress.

“I’m not for government by executive order,” Pryor said in an interview. “He needs to have statutory authority before he acts.”

Hagan said through a spokeswoman that “this is a problem that needs to be solved legislatively and not through executive action.”

Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) also said there are limits to what the president can — and should — do.

“We want him to be careful not to go too far,” Begich said.

That red line, in Begich’s view, is providing temporary legal status to all 8 million undocumented immigrants who would’ve qualified under a bill passed last year in the Senate. Hispanic lawmakers and immigrant rights groups are demanding that the president do just that.

The attempt to create distance with Obama highlights the discomfort among some Democrats. An executive action deferring deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants could be a boon to the national party as it heads into the 2016 presidential election. It isn’t considered such a clear winner in the Republican-leaning states that dominate the 2014 midterm map, although the extent to which it helps or hurts Democrats this year remains a point of debate.

A sweeping use of executive authority could do a lot to boost Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who is locked in an unexpectedly tight race. Hispanics make up 14 percent of the voting population in Colorado, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Udall was one of the first Democratic senators to endorse the move towards executive action. “The president should take action to stop tear apart families whose only crime is seeking a better life for themselves,” Udall told a Denver radio station in June.

But in the top battlegrounds of Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, Hispanics in each state constitute about 2-3 percent of the voting population. The fear is that efforts to motivate the progressive base won’t be offset by how much it could galvanize Republicans. At the very least, Democratic strategists said, it’s an annoyance for campaigns that are trying to stay focused on local and state issues.

“In a situation where we can only afford good things to happen, we can’t now afford bad things to happen,” said one strategist working in a battleground state. “If we were going into the 2012 or 2010 cycle, it would be whole different story. It creates a whole new issue. Members have to choose between their base and their swing. They have to look at what they have said in the past and comment on what the president has said in the past.”

GOP advocates of a comprehensive immigration overhaul have long warned against unilateral moves on immigration reform, arguing it would foreclose the possibility of any legislative action on immigration for the remainder of Obama’s term.

If Obama takes some executive action on deportations, Alfonso Aguilar, the executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said Republicans will “go ballistic” and it “certainly doesn’t help” red-state Democrats running for reelection.

“Not that immigration is a huge issue in those states, but it really doesn’t help, because they’ve been supportive of the president and just by association,” Aguilar said. “This helps create the image of the president as not working with Congress, not respecting the law.”

Even senators running in Democratic states weren’t eager to weigh in on the issue.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) declined through a spokesman to talk about it. Some offices, including those of Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), didn’t respond to requests for comment. Other senators didn’t want to get into details.

“I’m not going to speculate,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). “Congress needs to act on the issue. Once I see what he is proposing, I will be in a better position to comment.”

Landrieu said she voted for the Senate overhaul legislation last year because it is a “pro-business bill and it helps us create jobs here in America and secures our borders.” But she’s seeking her third term in a state where her Republican colleague, Sen. David Vitter, won reelection in 2010 the help of a TV ad touting his opponent’s support for “illegals.”

“The president should take what actions he can,” Landrieu said. “But he is not going to be able to take too many because there are limits to what he can do. The best thing would be for Congress to act. I’m going to leave it there.”